Four Better or Four Worse Challenge

[PeregrineTook]

THE FOUR BETTER OR FOUR WORSE CHALLENGE

Overview:
The goal of this challenge is to have a total of 8 Sims (a full household) reach their LTW's. Four of those will be good, positive LTW's (four better) and four of those will be evil, negative LTW's (four worse).

Starting Up the Challenge:
To begin this challenge, set lifespan on medium. You will create a household of 4 young adult Sims. Two of those must have "Better" LTW's and two must have "Worse" LTW's. At the completion of this challenge, you must have the Sims who have completed the 8 LTW's all living together in the same household. You may have other Sims live in he household during the process, but the Sims who complete the required LTW's must never move out of the household. No Sim that moves out of the household can ever move back in. If one of the eight Sims dies after or while completing their LTW, they must be replaced.
The empty plot of land where you start your household is to be the permanent residence for the household. Your initial household must have starting household funds of only $1,000 AFTER you have purchased your starting lot (use the familyfunds cheat). There is no size requirement for the lot. However, each of your eight Sims are to end up having their own, equally sized portion of the lot. The portion each Sim gets can be their own, individual home OR simply their own room in the same house. This portion is to contain all trophies they create or receive while achieving their LTW.
No methods of extending life may be used in this challenge (no ambrosia, tattoos, etc.) and at least six of your Sims must be regular humans or witches (a total of two Sims from the vampire, genie, werewolf, etc. lifestates may be used, though you will receive a penalty in the final scoring). Deathflowers may be carried ONLY by the original four Sims you create.

Adding Sims:
As stated, you start with only four Sims in your household, but will need a total of eight to complete the challenge. The following ways of adding Sims are acceptable:
-Adopting a child: You may only adopt a Sim of ages baby through child age-state, so no teens). The child must maintain A's throughout school (elementary and high school) to be eligible to be one of the final eight
-Marriage: You may marry a Sim and move him/her into the household. However, this must be a Sim who does not already have one of the required LTW's. Instead, you will use the "Change LTW" Lifetime Reward to make them fit the necessary LTW.
-Pregnancy: You may add to the household through standard procreation. Only the Sims with the four "worse" LTW's may have children out of wedlock.
-Clone Voucher: One of your original four Sims may use the Clone Voucher LTR to add a new member to the household. Clone Drone is NOT allowed as it creates a Sim that is the same age as your original Sim and does not require raising the new Sim.

The Eight LTW's and the Required Trophies
Four Better:
-Become an Astronaut (3 space rocks of any size and a painting of the Sim in his/her 10th level career attire)
-Descendant of DaVinci (two masterpiece paintings, two perfect sculptures, and a time machine)*
-Firefighter Super Hero (all trophies and rewards gained through promotions must be displayed)
-Perfect Mind, Perfect Body (two different types of bookshelves and two different types of exercise machines)

Four Worse:
-Gold Digger (a painting and a sculpture of the spouse made prior to their demise, the grave marker of the spouse must be kept out in this Sim's area)
-Emperor of Evil (the urns of three Sims he/she had to "get out of his/her way," three stolen items)
-Master Romancer (a medium-sized photo of each Sim he/she woohoos and a medium-sized photo of each woohoo location)*
-Monster Maker (a medium-sized photo of the first monster created, a painting of the second, and a sculpture of the third)*

*If you are lacking one of the necessary expansions for one of these LTW's, simply choose one that seems and equivalent (for example, Heartbreaker instead of Master Romancer) OR if you want to exchange one of the LTW's for another that seems suitably matched, you may do so (for example, swapping Seaside Savior for Firefighter Super Hero)

Scoring:
-For each of the eight LTW's you accomplish, you receive 25 points.
-If a Sim who is working on one of the LTW's dies and must be replaced, you receive a -5 penalty.
-If members of the household outside of those eight achieve a LTW, you receive and extra 15 points.
-For each of the trophy items on display for your eight Sims, you receive an additional 5 points.
-If one of your original 4 Sims dies during this challenge, you will receive a -10).
-For each supernatural type (other than witches) in your household, you receive a -10.


Optional Rules (you are not required to use any of these, they are merely additional challenges you can give yourself):
-None of the original four Sims can have any of the same traits.
-Each of your four "Better" Sims needs the good trait, each of the four "Worse" Sims need the evil trait.
-Each of the original four Sims must have one child and these four children complete the household (in the event of twin/triplet births, a suitable heir is simply chosen by the Watcher).
-No supernatural states AT ALL are allowed.
-Try this challenge on short lifespan.
-Each of your "better" Sims must have 4 best friends and each or your "worse" Sims must have 4 enemies.
-Add a Sim using each of the four accepted methods.

[PeregrineTook]

So, you wanted to start a Four Better or Four Worse Challenge? Well, I happen to have made a tutorial for that!
This will be a blend of basic story for how to get the challenge started, but there will also be spoiler windows containing helpful hints, tips, and strategy suggestions. I'll be using the base game world, Sunset Valley. Now, let's meet our household.
The lovely redhead is Leia Nardo, and she will be going for the Descendant of DaVinci LTW. I am, obviously, going for bad puns. Her traits are handy, good, eccentric, artistic, and genius.



The green gentleman is Sergeant Soldier, and he'll join the military to Become an Astronaut. His traits are good, disciplined, athletic, brave, and dog person.
Next, we have our Monster Maker, Heidi Jeckyl. She is evil, eccentric, inappropriate, a genius, and flirty.



Finally, Golden Diggah will be going for the Gold Digger LTW. He has the following traits: kleptomaniac, hopeless romantic, great kisser, evil, and heavy sleeper.

SPOILER: Click to show

Strategy notes: I selected each of these LTW's as my starters for specific reasons. The Descendant of DaVinci will be important since paintings and/or sculptures are the trophies for a number of the LTW's. Rabbit hole careers can take a while to level up, so I start the astronaut career right away. The Monster Maker can be that much easier by purchasing an extra Simbot through the "My Best Friend" LTR, so this will give her lots of time to earn the necessary 40,000 lifetime happiness points. The Gold Digger requires an open slot in the household, as well as the benefit of bringing in more money to a poor household, so I chose that one right away.

The household members instantly started working towards their goals.



Leia took a painting class (and used up $400 of the $1,000 we had to start), Heidi sought out treasures in the catacombs which she could sell to buy scrap, Sergeant got a job with the military, an Golden found a lovely big house in which to meet his future wife.



Said future wife was already married, but he saw that more as a speed bump than a roadblock.



Heidi got mauled by zombie bears, but did find a few treasures. She also grabbed a death flower before she left the cemetery.

SPOILER: Click to show

There is a penalty in this challenge if one of your original four die, and the inventor career runs some serious risk of setting oneself on fire, so a death flower can be an important safety measure to ward off accidental death.

Leia starts applying that newly-learned painting skill while Sergeant scores points with his boss with a friendly phone call.



Golden has managed to break up Nancy's marriage and is sharing her comfy bed while the rest of the group is sleeping at the fire station given that no house has been built as yet.

SPOILER: Click to show

The crew has taken up "residency" at the fire station for the first couple of days until house building becomes more realistic. The fire station offers bed, utilities, food, and some wonderful skilling options in the form of an easel, an inventor's workbench, and a telescope for logic.

Golden has seriously helped the household budget in various ways.



He has stolen and sold three cars, he's been dumpster diving, and he married into Nancy's money. This also brought in her expensive car and wedding gifts. All of that allowed the household to build this.

SPOILER: Click to show

Golden will also be gardening for the household, so each time I send him to the park to grab seeds, I also have him pick flowers to sell. The cosmos alone net $600 each

SPOILER: Click to show

I laid out the $0 wood flooring first to make sure that each Sim would have an equal 4x8 room in which to work on their skills and display their trophies as they complete their LTW's. The rooms are located around a common middle area with the kitchen and some bathrooms. I saved a few simoleans by leaving open walkways as the entrances to rooms rather than finishing the walls and then buying doors.

Another member will be added to the household once Nancy gives birth, but Nancy herself won't be one of our 8 LTW Sims. She'll have the honor of helping Golden reach his LTW.
Sergeant, however, is bringing in an even more helpful household member.



Agnes and Sergeant had instant chemistry, and she'll join the household going for the Perfect Mind, Perfect Body LTW.

SPOILER: Click to show

There is some definite strategy at work here. For one, Agnes brings in additional funds and a really nice car that I could sell for even more funds. However, as that's not really necessary, she'll simply have a really sweet ride and get a positive moodlet any time she goes anywhere. Additionally, she already has some athletic skill that gives her a head start on the Perfect Mind, Perfect Body LTW. Now I just need her to earn 10,000 lifetime happiness points to change her LTW.
Additional strategy note: If you have a Sim who is actively pursuing leveling up a career, have them get married right before they have days off for a weekend or some such. This is significant since Sims are given a few days off to settle in after a wedding, so they'll be forced to miss time that they could be advancing their careers. Use the days off, then, to work on developing the skills that help boost their careers and/or building the relationship with the Sim's boss.

The girls are getting some serious skilling done, and Bonehilda's taking care of everything around the house.

SPOILER: Click to show

The presence of a Bonehilda and of Nancy, the soon-to-be-unnecessary spouse, eliminates all household chores from the LTW Sims. This frees up more time for skilling.

Agnes already has a head start on the athletic skill, but she also brings in enough painting skill to do Nancy's portrait immediately. This allows Leia to focus on sculpting (and makes us that much closer to Nancy's demise).



While the household awaits the birth of Golden and Nancy's child, Leia adds another youngster to the household through adoption. This is Caesar, and he will be our Emperor of Evil.

SPOILER: Click to show

The children in this challenge need to achieve A's in both elementary and high school to be eligible to be one of the 8 LTW Sims. Therefore, you won't see as much of Caesar at this age as most of his energy goes towards school since the child stage gives you less time to get to that A.

Speaking of adding children, Nancy finally gave birth to Sparky. He'll be our Fire Fighter Super Hero.



After a makeover, Agnes joined Sergeant in building their athletic skills.



Sergeant and Agnes are one of the most naturally affectionate couples I've ever played. They pop autonomous wishes to kiss or woohoo all the time. This means she'll have enough points to switch her LTW in no time. And it's cute.



Despite being so busy with skilling, Leia finds time to interact with her young son.

SPOILER: Click to show

Actually, it is important to keep the social skill up for those Sims who do isolated work on skilling items. Interacting with each other or making phone calls can take care of this quickly and easily and avoid the negative moodlet from isolation.

Since Golden is essentially just waiting until he can complete his LTW by getting rid of his wife, he's basically morphed into a support Sim. Part of the support he's giving is learning to garden so that he can provide life fruit for the Simbots Heidi will eventually be making.

SPOILER: Click to show

The Sims going for Gold Digger and Master Romancer have less time-intensive LTW's, so they can easily fill more of a support role for the rest of the household.

Nancy's painting and sculpture are both finished. The only trophy Golden is missing is Nancy's urn.



Others aren't nearly as close to being finished with their LTW's. Leia and Heidi are each taking their own route to mastering inventing.



Nancy went to use the only stove on the lot to make waffles. Strangely, the oven was in this tiny shed. With a locked door. And a locked fence around it. And she had no cooking skills. However, she managed to avoid setting things on fire, so the waffles she burnt were removed and she'll just wait in there for starvation to happen.

SPOILER: Click to show

A note on spouse-killing: If the spouse you are intending to get rid of is a witch, there are some things to take into account. Burning can be an issue because of their ice blast spell, so remove their wand first. Starvation can also be a challenge as they can conjure apples with or without a wand. Therefore, have them forsake their witchitude before attempting starvation.

Meantime, exciting things are happening at the library as Agnes and Caesar (who is off in the background) both develop their logic and Leia builds her inventing skill.
However, Agnes, who has earned enough lifetime happiness points to change her LTW, finds her studying interrupted by her own birthday. Today, she becomes an adult,



and young Sparky ages up to toddler.



While having a mid-life crisis, Agnes wanted a makeover.



Done!
Heidi is doing well with the inventing.



That death flower never leaves her inventory.
Nancy has finally had a black-cloaked visitor,



and Golden has seen her ghost. One LTW down, seven to go.

SPOILER: Click to show

Of course, I also have to make sure that Golden stays alive. If, for any reason, he passes away before the challenge is over, he'll need to be replaced and we'll take a penalty on the overall score.

And Caesar is getting closer to achieving his as he's aged up to teen.



He skilled up in logic as a child and now he's going to work on athletics as teen so he'll be set for his criminal career track.



At least Caesar will have one happy couple to be role-models for him given how Golden and Nancy's relationship went. Odds are high that Caesar will bring in our final Sim to complete the household.

SPOILER: Click to show

The final spot has to sit empty for a while so that Heidi will be able to create Simbots, then release them into the wild.